Cannonfire

You know my name.For the record.
Doctor Khatanbaatar Namnansüren.Aliases…
You know my aliases…Your mask. Speak clearly please. Aliases.
Cannonfire Khan. Nam the Cannonfire Man. Cannonfire Xan. Namnan Sussex. Doctor Eric Buck. Doctor Arne Scholes-Young. Doctor Leon Southset. Lord Conrad Sussex.Age.
100. I think. Perhaps 101.Education.
Informal.Place of birth.
I do not know the exact place of birth.Be as specific as you can.
Somewhere on the slopes of the Kharidal Soridag Range. Within forty kilometers of the Bolot village, or what used to be the Bolot village; my family members were tribespeople.

“As with Ramage’s previous Freddie Babington story we are thrown straight in at the deep end. We the readers have two choices: go with the flow or take copious notes. I took the latter route, but wasn’t sure that it helped me much. There are detailed descriptions of locations and family kinships, an emerging chronology of events and individual revelations. We’ll expect the usual red herrings and misdirections, of course, but like many a good writer of the ‘cozy’ genre the final denouement will have been clearly signposted if only we had the wit to spot it early on.”Return of the gentleman sleuth, by Calmgrove, June 20, 2016

L’Amande et La Fleur tells the story of the rushed adolescence and young love of an orphaned French artist, Julian, who travels to China to rid himself of the stultifying effects of the politics, bigotry, and seemingly endless prosperity in early 20th Century Parisian upper-crust culture. It is near the Yangtze River where he meets Solomon Garcon, an African-American draft-dodger who has seen the horrid effects of war. The story presents the two in monologue—from morning to night, against a background of mountains—caught in the gusts of memory that rise up within them. Despite their different stations, the two suffer identically from the insecurity of measuring themselves against a world undreamt-of by any other mind and the fear that one has accidentally outdone the other. The result becomes sunk in the unreality of the labyrinthine self that exists not to comment on the passing people and events but to celebrate the connection between the various fractals of our lives. Equal part philosophical quest and brutally detailed introspection, L’Amande bends the infinite involutions of self-consciousness without sacrificing a plot that highlights adult relationships and themes of loss, love, and problems of a changing world.

Thomas Hrycyk is currently a candidate for an MFA at Queens University of Charlotte and has worked for multiple literary publications including Fifth Wednesday Journal. He was born in Chicago and holds a B.A. in English and Philosophy from DePaul University. He recently moved to Nashville and works as an educator at Tennessee State University.

“Joy Chevern and Rodney Bauman. Their names have been and still are a staple of TV news, talk shows, blogs, and the information networks of both the left and right wings. Writers of made-for-TV movies and PhD theses have all tried to lock down their motives. The only conclusion would-be scholars and Hollywood’s dregs can agree on is that Rodney and Joy have managed to force the entire world to redefine crime and culture.

“This is a risky statement to make at the start of such a book, but I honestly do not know if I have anything new to offer the nation’s conversations on who these people were and what their crimes mean for the future. Instead my only goal is to attempt to pierce the mind of Rodney Bauman, using everything I could piece together from records, interviews, and other sources. With Dead End, I am not trying to make yet another entertainment commodity out of their notoriety, but rather, in spite of my lack of a graduate degree, to make an academic effort to simply understand why. This may seem like a thankless and perhaps even pointless quest, but I have been fortunate enough to enjoy the full cooperation of Bauman himself and the people who know him.”Read More